Friday, November 22, 2013

Pistol
Discovered Strapped to Ankle of Passenger – A loaded .45 caliber pistol with six rounds and
one chambered was discovered strapped to the ankle of a Pittsburgh (PIT)
passenger during a pat-down after he had opted out of Advanced Imaging
Technology (AIT).

28Firearms Discovered This Week–
Of the 28 firearms, 25 were loaded and eight had rounds chambered. See a
complete list and more photos at the bottom of this post.

Inert
Ordnance and Grenades etc.
- We continue to find inert hand grenades and other weaponry on a weekly basis.
Please keep in mind that if an item looks like a realistic bomb, grenade, mine,
etc., it is prohibited - real or not. When these items are found at a
checkpoint or in checked baggage, they can cause significant delays in
checkpoint screening. While they may be novelty items, you cannot bring them on
a plane. Read
here on why inert items cause problems.

A
tobacco grinder in the shape of a grenade was discovered in a carry-on bag at
San Francisco (SFO).

A
fuse igniter was discovered in the checked baggage of Guam (GUM) passenger.

Artfully
Concealed Prohibited Items –
It’s important to examine your bags prior to traveling to ensure no prohibited
items are inside. If a prohibited item is discovered in your bag or on your
body, you could be cited and quite possibly arrested by local law enforcement.
Here are a few examples from this weekwhere
prohibited items were found by our officers in strange places.

A
pocketknife was found concealed inside a neck tie at Oklahoma City (OKC).

A
31-inch sword was detected concealed inside a cane at Cleveland (CLE).

A
razor blade was detected inside the lining of the shoe of a St. Louis
passenger.

A
belt buckle knife was discovered at Los Angeles (LAX).

A
belt-knife was discovered at Omaha (OMA).

C02
Cartridges – Two
C02 cartridges were discovered this week on separate days at Phoenix (PHX).
This is just a quick reminder that the FAA prohibits CO2 cartridges in checked
and carry-on bags unless they are with an inflatable life vest. You can have up
to two in the life vest and two spares. The spares must accompany the life vest
and be presented as one unit. CO2 cartridges are also permitted for operating
mechanical limbs, along with spare cylinders to ensure an adequate supply for
the journey.

Ammunition – When packed
properly, ammunition can be transported in your checked luggage, but
it is never permissible to pack ammo in your carry-on bag.

Top to Bottom: Ammo Discovered at LGB and MEM

Firearms
Discovered This Week in Carry-On Bags

Top to Bottom, Left to Right: Firearms Discovered at RNO, PNS, PHX, RDU, PDX, SAT, IAH

*In
order to provide a timely weekly update, I compile my data from a preliminary
report. The year-end numbers will vary slightly (increase) from what I report
in the weekly updates. However, any monthly, midyear, or end-of-year numbers
TSA provides on this blog or elsewhere will not be estimates.

Unfortunately
these sorts of occurrences are all too frequent which is why we talk about
these finds. Sure, it’s great to share the things that our officers are
finding, but at the same time, each time we find a dangerous item, the
throughput is slowed down and a passenger that likely had no ill intent ends up
with a citation or in some cases is even arrested. The passenger can face a
penalty as high as $7,500.00. This is a friendly reminder to please
leave these items at home. Just because we find a prohibited item on an individual
does not mean they had bad intentions, that's for the law enforcement officer
to decide. In many cases, people simply forgot they had these items.

20 comments:

I know that there will be the comments" But the AIT is useless, you didn't find anything with it. I am not a fan of the AIT, nor will I submit to it, however, I wonder how may people knowingly are carrying and opt-out of the scanner. Then it falls under a "pat down". If the AIT was used, it would have been detected. I can't help but think that most of the people getting caught are putting in their bags, knowing that the AIT or pat down would be more likely to find it (the weapon) and you may have a chance of getting through. Hell, look at the stats, TSA does not have a good record at all.

Okay, I have had items found in the bottom of a carry-on a couple of times that were forgotten, but "concealed" suggests ill-intent. My multi-tool that was found on x-ray was not concealed in anything. Last week TSA inspected my "safe" multi-tool with no problem. However, strapping a weapon on your ankle and expecting you can "sneak" it past TSA? This is a special kind of foolish, really hard to believe. Please keep up the blog postings so we can continue to be amazed at the lack of common sense among our fellow passengers. Wait, I bet they didn't fly, so they were not our fellow passengers: good work!

If a metal detector was used, the gun would be detected. The passanger actually was quite dumb to opt out, since his chances of going undetected with the full body scanner (which does not alarm with metal objects on the side of the body) were much higher than with a pat down.

Body scanners are slow, invasive, expensive and much less effective than metl detectors. They should not be in use.

Definately dumb to carry but I'm frankly surprised they caught it because I rarely get a pat down in that area of my body when I opt out. I won't go into specifics on here but there are places I could have hidden a small pistol and got past every pat down I have ever received when I opted out of AIT. Why TSA doesn't have opt outs go through the magnetometer before the pat down I'll never know. They've always been far more eager to run their fingers along the inside waistband of my underwear than the two places on my body I advise them present a problem for the AIT. Both would be perfect to hide a small weapon. Despite mentioning these places I've never had a screener touch either one.

SafetyGuy is missing the point that Anonymous grasped immediately. the firearm strapped to the traveler's ankle was no threat to aviation safety. concealing a firearm is not an indicator of ill intent. it is more likely an indicator of an individual who was willing to take a chance against tyranny to retain his inherent right of self-defence. he lost the bet, but the principle remains. TSA is continuing to harass people and waste immense amounts of money to act far outside of their mandate.

"...In another airport a man was taken by force from an airplane because he was acting irrationally. What if he had the gun?"

Then we would be reading a completely different news story, that is what would have happened.

There are a million what-ifs when it comes to anything in life. If you want to see monsters under every bad and boogey-men in every closet that is your choice. I refuse to allow *your* fears to dictate how *I* live *my* life.

I refuse to allow *your* fears to dictate how *I* live *my* life.By that reasoning, the airlines should still confiscate your weapons if they don't want you to bring them on board despite your fears of being attacked and not having your gun.

1,800,000 people flew every DAY last week, so just under 12,000,000 people went through unnecessary screening at the hands of the TSA.

TSA found about thirty weapons, so they missed another seventy weapons. Still nothing happened because the TSA knows and admitted in court documents that terrorists aren't trying to take over planes or bring bombs on board.

Even if you're terrified of these thirty weapons, you survived your flight with another seventy weapons, possibly one was on your flight! Of course, the chances were extremely low that the passenger next to you carried one of these scary weapons, since only .0008% of passengers had one.

Still, your terror is misplaced because every passenger had at least one object they could have used as a weapon, from a pen to a knitting needle to a laptop or broken CD. Yet, no one used their high heels or laptop power cords or any other item as a weapon of terror to bring down a plane, or even used these everyday items as weapons of assault to harm flight staff or other passengers.

Stop letting the TSA scare you into giving up your rights to privacy and travel.

I love how everyone calls the AIT machines "invasive" and "intrusive". It is a body surface scanner. The agents have a rough outline of a person (like a gingerbread man) that they see on the screen and a little red box comes up when bulky items are scanned on the surface of your body. It's actually the definition of unintrusive.

Anonymous said...I love how everyone calls the AIT machines "invasive" and "intrusive". It is a body surface scanner. The agents have a rough outline of a person (like a gingerbread man) that they see on the screen and a little red box comes up when bulky items are scanned on the surface of your body. It's actually the definition of unintrusive.

Anonymous, the TSAgents have this "gingerbread" outline because of software. Underneath that outline, and, according to the original RFPs, these scanners are capable of storing the raw images used to generate these outlines. These scanners are just as invasive as the ones that are no longer in service, just as slow, and just as untested (and, just as susceptible to both false positives and false negatives).